Lesson 3: Module 1 – Your Content Strategy

Almost every blog post you write should bring your reader back to working with you or buying from you. So let’s start there!

What are you trying to sell in the next two to three months? Do you have a new product or program? Each of your blog posts (or at least the majority of them) should provide a natural flow to those sales.

For example, if you’ve got a new program that you want to enroll people into, start by outlining all of the topics in that program.

What keywords and phrases do you want to rank highly for in the search engines? Take each of them in turn, and brainstorm at least 10 different questions you think someone might use while searching. Write posts for each of them.

What other (general) questions would potential customers have about hiring someone like you or working with someone like you? List them out and blog about them.

Ask one of those questions to a group of leaders in your industry/niche and assemble their answers into a post.

Interview one leader in-depth. Interview many for a blog series.

Create a list of tools, resources or people that your audience needs to know about.

Assemble the most thought-provoking or inspirational quotes in your industry/niche.

Ask your readers a question and assemble their answers in a post. Or, have them write a blog post as an answer and assemble the links in a round-up post.

Answer reader questions or expand on comments to other posts – even those not on your own site.

Take a birds-eye view of your industry/niche and analyze its strengths and weaknesses. What’s going well? What’s missing?

Write a guide to getting organized or being more efficient in your industry/niche.

Take a famous person (alive, dead, or fictitious) and write a post from their point of view. What kind of advice would they give on your topic? Also works great for books, movies and tv shows.

Create a list of must-read books or blogs in your topic.

Create a beginner’s guide to your topic or website. Where should a first-timer start? What articles or books would be helpful?

Write a short manifesto for your industry or niche. Try to keep it to 20 or less points. Publish that and then blog about each of your points in a separate post (and link back to the original manifesto).

Compile a comprehensive list of industry statistics and research. These types of posts are great for getting inbound links.

Write a blog post responding to a controversial article or video in your niche.

Create a decision guide: This can be text-only, an image, or an interactive tool.

Write a case study about a customer or client experience.

Write about your own experience as a teachable moment.

Recycle some of your prior e-newsletters by turning them into blog posts.

Do a poll or survey of your audience and publish a post with your findings.

Create a ‘hack’ post: A list of workarounds for a common problem or issue in your niche.

Write a blog post about a conversation that’s taking place on social media: For instance, if your Facebook fans are having a particularly lively debate, write a post summarizing the main arguments and offering a solution or answer.

Review a recent book that would be relevant to your audience.

Write a blog post but don’t finish it: Ask your readers to finish it for you in the comments or via an email submission (contest, anyone?)

Write a post listing and linking to all your articles on a particular topic or theme. This is great for SEO and for increasing readers’ time-on-site. (Also great for assembling ebooks!)

Post a cool infographic – they help to visualize complicated data and they’re hugely popular these days. As always, when something becomes mainstream, the overall quality is poor. So, if you’re not a designer, hire one to get a viral infographic that stands out of the crowd. Or find one that’s already been created, embed it on your site, and offer a few words of commentary.

Bust a myth in your industry/niche.

Review an event you’ve attended in your industry.

Write a post in response to someone else’s controversial blog post or article.

For more on the types of stories you want to tell with your blog, see: